Laughter and Humility (GK-CHESTERTON.ORG)

Quotes by and posts relating to one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton

A blog dedicated to providing quotes by and posts relating to one of the most influential (and quotable!) authors of the twentieth century, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). If you do not know much about GKC, I suggest visiting the webpage of the American Chesterton Society as well as this wonderful Chesterton Facebook Page by a fellow Chestertonian

A book I published containing 112 pieces Chesterton wrote for the newspaper "The Speaker" at the beginning of his career.

They are also available for free electronically on another blog of mine here, if you wish to read them that way.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

Modern education means handing down the customs of the minority, and rooting out the customs of the majority. [...] the poor have imposed on them mere pedantic copies of the prejudices of the remote rich.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

The advantage of an elementary philosophic habit is that it permits a man,
for instance, to understand a statement like this, “Whether there can or can not
be exceptions to a process depends on the nature of that process.” The
disadvantage of not having it is that a man will turn impatiently even from so
simple a truism; and call it metaphysical gibberish. He will then go off
and say: “One can’t have such things in the twentieth century”; which really is
gibberish. Yet the former statement could surely be explained to him in
sufficiently simple terms. If a man sees a river run downhill day after
day and year after year, he is justified in reckoning, we might say in betting,
that it will do so till he dies. But he is not justified in saying that it
cannot run uphill, until he really knows why it runs downhill. To say it
does so by gravitation answers the physical but not the philosophical question.
It only repeats that there is a repetition; it does not touch the deeper
question of whether that repetition could be altered by anything outside it.
And that depends on whether there is anything outside it. For instance,
suppose that a man had only seen the river in a dream. He might have seen
it in a hundred dreams, always repeating itself and always running downhill.
But that would not prevent the hundredth dream being different and the river
climbing the mountain; because the dream is a dream, and there is something
outside it. Mere repetition does not prove reality or inevitability.
We must know the nature of the thing and the cause of the repetition. If
the nature of the thing is a Creation, and the cause of the thing a Creator, in
other words if the repetition itself is only the repetition of something willed
by a person, then it is not impossible for the same person to will a different
thing. If a man is a fool for believing in a Creator, then he is a fool
for believing in a miracle; but not otherwise. Otherwise, he is simply a
philosopher who is consistent in his philosophy.

A modern man is quite free to choose either philosophy. But what is
actually the matter with the modern man is that he does not know even his own
philosophy; but only his own phraseology. He can only answer the next
spiritual message produced by a spiritualist, or the next cure attested by
doctors at Lourdes, by repeating what are generally nothing but phrases; or are,
at their best, prejudices.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

[A piece that Chesterton wrote for his wife, before they were married]To My Lady

God made you very carefully,He set a star apart for it,He stained it green and gold with fieldsAnd aureoled it with sunshine,
He peopled it with kings, peoples, republics,And so made you very, very carefully.All nature is God's book, filled with his rough sketches for you.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

I have always understood that charity meant a kind and reverent handling of the actions of sinners, an allowance for their temptations, an unconquerable hope for their souls. I do not quite understand what charity can have to do with the denying of the existence of the sin. If you admit that Lord Foodle or Mr. Nathan Boodle have committed crimes; then I will show them charity and enough to melt a mad elephant. But if you say they have not, then either you are not a charitable man, but an ordinary normal liar, or else they are blameless people and not objects of charity at all. Charity does not hide sins. Charity exposes sins, but exposes also their excuses. Charity does not ask us to flatter the tyrant in his strength. Charity asks us to pity the tyrant in his weakness. Charity has for its business the searching out of the deepest and darkest part of a man, which is often also the most lovable; charity finds those secret and perverse ideals of which the criminal himself will not speak, and reveals the strange extenuations which he hides more cravenly than his crimes.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

In the Morning Post only this morning I see a solemn leading article blaming a politician for attacking an editor. Seeing that editors have no other purpose on this planet except to attack politicians, I cannot very clearly see where the wickedness comes in. Is an editor a soldier, or is he only a spy? The Morning Post speaks of the "courage" of the Spectator. Really, with the kindest will in the world, I do not think it requires much "courage" to maintain any of the opinions of the Spectator. But, according to the Morning Post, it must be positively cowardly; for it is free to attack statesmen because they have no right of reply.

Friday, February 9, 2018

[...] Dickens shows none of that dreary submission to the environment of the irrevocable that had for an instant lain on him like a cloud. On this occasion he sees with the old heroic clarity that to be a failure may be one step to being a saint. On the third day he rose again from the dead.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

We must not hate humanity, or despise humanity, or refuse to help humanity; but we must not trust humanity; in the sense of trusting a trend in human nature which cannot turn back to bad things. “Put not your trust in princes; nor in any child of man.” That is the precise point of this very practical sort of politics. Be a Royalist if you like (and there is a vast amount to be said, and a vast amount being said, just now, for more personal and responsible rule); try a Monarchy if you think it will be better; but do not trust a Monarchy, in the sense of expecting that a monarch will be anything but a man. Be a Democrat if you like (and I shall always think it the most generous and the most fundamentally Christian ideal in politics); express your sense of human dignity in manhood suffrage or any other form of equality; but put not your trust in manhood suffrage or in any child of man. There is one little defect about Man, the image of God, the wonder of the world and the paragon of animals; that he is not to be trusted. If you identify him with some ideal, which you choose to think is his inmost nature or his only goal, the day will come when he will suddenly seem to you a traitor.

About Me

My name is Mike. I am a Catholic living in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky (though I am originally from Belleville, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis on the Illinois side of the Mississippi). I am a convert to Catholicism from a fundamentalist Baptist background, and Jesus Christ is the most important person in my life.